The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation (Classic Reprint)

angling is an art and an art worth your learning. The question is rather whether you be capable of learning it. For angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so. I mean with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice, but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an enquiring, searching, observing, wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience and a love and propensity to the art itself. But having once got and practiced it, then doubt not, but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be like virtue or reward to itself.

the third most frequently reprinted book in the English language after the Bible and the works of Shakespeare

Isaac Walton wrote this book called the complete angler in the 17th century

Walton's book the complete angler which is kind of a pastoral fantasy about a guy who goes out fishing from London and meets an utter hunter on the way to the stream and they start having a discourse about their respective passions the the the fisherman defense fishing in the hunter defense hunting and the fisherman ends up converting the hunter almost a religious conversion conversion to fishing and educating him about his passion which is fishing and the complete angler is in part code for the complete angler and it was it's almost like a civil war polemic he was he was trying to very gently express his views about what was going on in the country during his time and what he was advocating in my mind Isaac Walton was a return from a return to primitive Christianity because he talks about the apostles one of his first arguments in favor of fishing is that the apostles were fishermen and that Jesus chose fishermen to show his miracles too he doesn't say that but I I infer and I've had conversations about this with friends late at night fishing off the beach and Rhode Island or wherever about how you know why did Jesus go to a fisherman to perform his miracles because fishermen know they're in parliament really well they're not like city dwellers they're up in the morning with the sun or before the sun they go to bed with the sun they know their environment they know the storms they know the seas they know how their boat works they probably built their boats by hand from local materials they're totally in tune with nature so if he comes down to a lake and walks on the water they know something's going on or if he says cast your nuts on the other side of the boat and there's like a sand bar there or something and they know in a million years they never catch fish there but all of us on there's a net load of fish that they know this guy is something special but if Jesus went into the city and and did some miracles they might think he's a joker or something not take him seriously but so anyway that's that's not a nice tangential well I don't know but it's not it's interesting because even you there's like this parallel that you that you demonstrate in what you wrote after that that that a well-diners making is drawing this parallel between the qualities that make a good angler and that make a good Christian I mean not just that symbolism and that that that that fish and fishing run all the way through the new testament yeah and that they're gentle people who follow peace and and he was sort of advocating you know this like I said this return to primitive Christian in which in which he meant look guys we don't need we don't need these chapels and churches and buildings to worship and we can worship whatever we want to worship in a cave in a canyon and by a stream and he felt that that although he and his friends were being pushed out of um it's the phones ring where you are yeah although he and his friends were being pushed out of out of London in their places of work in worship like his good friend the poet and sermonizer John Dunn that they could still practice Christianity in the fields and in the woods and in the pastures and by this stream and that's I mean looking at it now I think that's the success of Christianity too is that it's very it's a very portable religion you can take Christianity really anywhere in a in a prison and in a in a in a in a in a in a in a church in in the city in the country because it rests on the sacrifice of a human being where as these the indigenous faiths around the world like in Polynesia they're completely connected to to creatures that live in the environment and if you if you fragment nature too much if you take the creatures away if the eel becomes extinct then you've erased the sense of awe and wonder that the foundation of the faith rests on and they're completely not portable you can't take the the Maori religion in New Zealand and superimposite on the innuits in Alaska it doesn't work you know it's not but yeah

I mean, there were a good three or four months that were just me reading all the great books. Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side, and Barton Gellman, Angler, and Korn, and Isikoff, Hubris, I mean, on and on.

I mean, there were a good three or four months that were just me reading all the great books. Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side, and Barton Gellman, Angler, and Korn, and Isikoff, Hubris, I mean, on and on.